The 2025 Super Bowl will take place on Feb. 9 at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, home of the Saints. While the teams that will play in the game will not be known for many weeks, PR practitioners can still be sure of the following:
- Positive earned media for brands associated with the Super Bowl will still be very difficult to obtain.
- The great majority of coverage leading up to the game will again be negative. Articles about gambling and players’ health will dominate the pre-game coverage. (Last year, articles about player’s injuries to their brains, and other health-related issues, were spread throughout the year, instead of as in previous year’s when they dominated pre-Super Bowl coverage.)
- If Kansas City qualifies for the Super Bowl, they are certain to obtain significant three-peat coverage.
- If Kansas City qualifies and the Swift-Kelce relationship is still intact, the couple is certain to receive significant coverage.
- Brand spokespeople will say that coughing up more than $7 million dollars for a 30-second commercial—not including production costs, which can add many more millions of dollars to the price—was money well spent, even if they are privately disappointed with the ROI.
- Advertising agencies that created the commercials are certain to say that the cost was worth it, even if the hoped for results didn’t materialize.
- And if clients complain to their PR agency about not getting positive earned publicity, high-level agency execs will never blame themselves. Instead, some lower-level individuals, who were following orders, or most likely were dealt a weak hand, will be blamed.
This brings us to what PR people whose clients have a tie-in with the Super Bowl should be doing to prepare. Consider the following—starting right now:
If I was asked what strategy might deliver more earned media than was received in previous Super Bowls, the first thing I would suggest is to add a former newspaper reporter or editor to the account team. That person would bring a journalist’s thinking to the planning. These days with newspapers cutting staff, there are probably loads of journalists who would be happy to be hired full-time by a PR agency or as a consultant.
The second thing I would advise is to ditch the old and tired playbook of hiring a former football player as a brand spokesperson. I say that because any print, radio or TV interviews would concentrate on the former player’s career, with most likely a one-line sentence saying, “So and So is a spokesperson for XYZ company.” Securing placements like that will certainly help the PR firm’s placement report, but will it help the brand? Probably not, because any talking points about the product will be missing.
The third thing I would advise is to consider hiring more than one brand spokesperson. Too often, PR people have tunnel vision when it comes to hiring spokespersons to deliver client’s messages. They offer the same spokesperson to various sections of a news outlet, ignoring that each section has different needs. To paraphrase a statement I originated many years ago about client crises, and which has been copied by many other PR people without giving credit to the originator, “There is no one-size-fits-all brand PR spokesperson. Different facets of news outlets have different needs.” Editors and reporters of those facets will not change to accommodate you. You must change your approach to accommodate them. (Remember that journalists don’t need PR people. PR people need journalists.)
An example: When honchoing an education program, I hired a former New York City mayor to be the spokesperson. The reason? Before entering politics, he was a school teacher. A perfect fit for the program. I would only use spokespersons who had a direct connection to the product, not “hired guns” like Peyton Manning, who seemingly likes every brand in the world.
Proponents of hiring former football players would argue that there is no better fit than a former football player as a Super Bowl spokesperson. While true, it misses the point. And the point is that brand talking points are hardly ever mentioned in those news stories.
The fourth thing I would say is that there is only one way to assure gaining meaningful earned publicity. And that is to separate yourself from the pack by offering journalists something that they are not used to getting from PR people—pitches with new ideas. And that means thinking outside-the-box, which in our do-no-harm copycat business is hardly ever done.
Sports writers are extremely busy preparing for their Super Bowl assignments. Think of strategies that will appeal to non-sports writers. I suggest you think like the journalist who writes around an event instead of the event itself:
- Pitch a psychiatrist who specializes in gambling addiction to journalists.
- Offer a dietitian who can suggest how to prepare a healthy Super Bowl party.
- Hire a cardiologist to talk about how to reduce stress while watching the game since people with high blood pressure, high cholesterol or cardiovascular disease are more apt to have a heart incident during the Super Bowl (and other sporting events).
- Suggest an alcohol counselor—because alcohol-beverage ads are so prevalent on telecasts of football games, this person could discuss signs that suggest a person is becoming an alcoholic. Here are some facts to get you started: The number of deaths caused by alcohol-related diseases more than doubled among Americans between 1999 and 2020, according to new research. Alcohol was involved in nearly 50,000 deaths among adults ages 25 to 85 in 2020, up from just under 20,000 in 1999. The study was published in The American Journal of Medicine and reported in the Dec. 10 New York Times. Yet alcoholic commercials are a staple of televised sports events.
The fifth thing I would suggest is to not staff a sports marketing account team with sports fanatics. Staff it with people who like and follow sports yet realize that sports are a big business and, unlike years ago, is now covered like any other big business. And since there is so much controversy surrounding mega-sporting events, the account team should also have a member who has PR crisis experience.
The sixth thing I would suggest is that if a client insists on a former football player as a spokesperson, make sure everyone being considered has an unblemished past. What you don’t want is a reporter including past unsportsmanlike actions in a story about the athlete. That means many athletes you were considering would be eliminated. But as my mother told me when I first began dating, “Take your time before cementing a relationship. There are plenty of fish in the sea.” The same is true about athlete spokespersons.
And for brands that don’t want to pay millions of dollars in order to be able to say “official sponsor,” the seventh thing I would suggest is to consider ambush marketing. Leagues and brands that spend big bucks in order to say that they are the “official sponsor” of this or that think ambush marketing is evil. But history shows that news outlets don’t—they will report on ambush marketing campaigns if they’re clever enough. Just make sure that you don’t use any of the legally protected logos or language. Clear your program, press releases and pitches with an attorney.
Considering the past actions of the National Football League, which include denying that concussions can cause life-altering brain injuries often resulting in deaths, as well as the league’s efforts to destroy the reputations of the medical scientists who discovered the link between concussions and brain injuries, and the league’s partnership with legalized bookies and alcoholic entities who advertise during hours when young children are watching, I have no compunction about recommending ambush marketing programs. Competition has made the American economy the strongest in the world. Why should sports sponsorships be given a pass?
There are many other tactics to gain reporters’ attention that can result in earned media. What’s needed are account staffers who are not afraid to toss the stale playbooks and can think like a reporter who writes around an event and is not afraid to try something new.
